The Blue Hackle (45 page)

The meager light revealed the chamber as a
nasty hole in the ground, the flip side of a hobbit hole. No, the
rough vault of the ceiling wasn’t sinking any lower. Jean tried to
look into every muck-filled corner without taking her eyes off Rab
. . .

There.
Dakota crouched behind a low
stone partition, her knees drawn up to her chest beneath a
too-large raincoat and her eyes gleaming with tears. Why hadn’t she
run?
Oh.
She wouldn’t make it to the door any faster than
Rab would.
Check.
Time to throw a second pawn into the game.
Maybe a knight, leaping at odd angles. Not quite an all-powerful
Queen.

Jean tried a step outside Rab’s spotlight.
The glare didn’t follow her.

One slow step at a time, she sidled toward
Dakota, and took the child’s hand in her own. The chill in Dakota’s
flesh struck right through her glove even as her senses warmed to
an all-too-brief whiff of Diana’s perfume trapped in the lining of
the coat.

“I wanted to see the old castle,” Dakota
said, words staccato. “Mom says we’re leaving, like, first thing
tomorrow morning, but Dad didn’t have time to bring me down here
like he said.”

“That’s okay,” Jean told her.

“It was almost light for a few minutes, but
when I got here it was dark again. And
he
followed me.
He
scared me. So I tried to hide, but he found me.”

Scared. Oh yeah
. Good thing Dakota had
found a narrow space where Rab couldn’t quite get at her. He could
get at Jean, though.

Skin crawling, heart palpitating, she looked
around. But while Rab was sitting on his rock like a cat at a mouse
hole, he didn’t move. Perhaps he was crushed by the weight of his
own thoughts. The vestiges of conscience. The enormity of what he’d
done. Or perhaps he was simply immobilized by sobriety. They still
had a chance . . .

“No guid will come of this,” he said.

No shit, Sherlock
. Jean pulled Dakota
to her feet.

“Everything was all right ’til the auld laird
died. Then Fergie Beg and wee Diana came. They’re family, they had
no call opening the place to incomers, outlanders, foreigners, the
lot of them poking and prying.” Now the glare of Rab’s light turned
toward Dakota and Jean. “The lass there, she was by way of telling
Fergie about the Aussie’s card and all. Should have minded her own
business.”

“I didn’t tell anyone you dropped the card
and I gave it back to you,” Dakota said. “I didn’t even know it was
important until last night. I told about seeing the ghost on the
driveway, you know, and they made fun of me, even though that
turned out to be important.”

Jean pulled her one stiff step closer to the
door. “That’s okay. We figured it out anyway. As for ghosts . .
.”

“There’s one here. I saw him falling. I
yelled, I guess. And then he came running. I couldn’t always
understand what he was saying, just that I shouldn’t be here, Mom
and Dad and the Australian lady, we should go back where we came
from and stop making trouble. He’s got that knife and he doesn’t
like me very much and he scared me, you know?” Dakota’s voice
climbed into a higher register.

“I know.” The hair on the back of Jean’s neck
was doing a snake-dance, like medieval villagers circling a bonfire
on the Winter Solstice, welcoming the return of the light . . .
Medieval. Rory MacLeod falling. Jean pulled Dakota another
step.

“We canna help it. We canna sort things to
suit ourselves.” Rab’s voice rose, too—he was imitating Nancy. Then
his words plummeted downward, reverberating in the tiny chamber. In
a dark crevice, something stirred in response. “Rubbish, woman.
Stuff and nonsense. We’re never helpless. I’m proving that to you.
I’m proving it to Fergie and Diana and the polis.”

He was working himself up. His next thought
would be,
in for a lamb, in for a sheep
. In for an Aussie,
in for two Americans.

Jean eased Dakota further toward the doorway.
Leaning close to the child’s ear, she whispered, “Alasdair’s seen
the man falling from the tower, too. But I haven’t. Can you call
him, do you think, so I can see him, too?”

Dakota nodded, her eyes reflecting one tiny
gleam of light. She took another step without Jean’s urging. Jean
turned them both toward the door even as she kept her face pointed
at Rab. His eyes glittered beneath the bill of his cap. The knife
glittered in his hand.

Now!
Jean yanked Dakota through the
doorway, but it was her own foot that snagged and stumbled, and the
child’s hand that steadied her and the child’s momentum that
propelled them up the rough steps, out of the dungeon, the cellar,
the hole, out of the darkness into open air. Jean swept her
flashlight around the enclosing walls—the gateway out of the keep,
where the hell was the gateway—there!

Their footsteps echoed. So did a scrape, a
bird disturbed or a pebble beneath someone’s foot. The entire
Northern Constabulary, right down to the janitors, could have
besieged the castle in the time she’d spent underground. But Jean
wasn’t going to stop dead—the operative word being “dead”—and wait
for a possibly nonexistent cavalry to arrive.

Flashlight flaring, Rab burst out of the
dungeon doorway like a grizzly bear from its den.

Jean released Dakota’s hand and shoved her
toward the gateway—you don’t have to outrun the bear, just outrun
your companion—Rab’s steps thudded closer and she sensed the sharp
blade at her back—at least Greg had been stabbed in the chest, he’d
faced his killer . . .

Not now
, chattered the teeth of her
brain.
Not now, I’m getting married!

Caught between fire and sword, Jean’s nervous
system convulsed. Even as she lurched over brush and stone, her
mind, her senses, screamed:
Jump! Leap! Take the plunge!

And in front of her Dakota darted a frantic
look upward. “The ghost, he was there. He jumped, he fell . .
.”

The invisible weight, the weight of the
invisible, dropped like armor onto Jean’s shoulders and she gasped.
Through her vision swooped a bird, no, a falling body—fluttering
fabric, limbs pumping, mouth open on a wail of surrender as much as
despair, a perceptible howl that cut the dark mist like the slash
of a dagger.

Rab looked up, stopped, spun, cried out in
horror. Rory fell right through him, knocking him off balance so
that Rab tripped over his own feet and toppled to the ground.

Jean and Dakota collided, clutched at each
other, staggered backward. For what seemed like a long, long moment
but was probably no more than a split second, the ghost of the
fallen man and the living flesh of a man whose mind had fallen lay
tangled together, yellow raincoat against rough plaid, Rab’s mouth
gaping like a cavern in a thicket, Rory’s eyes focused on a
dimension above below beyond.

Then Rab lay there alone. Flailing and
cursing, he pulled himself to his feet.

Jean pushed Dakota over the threshold and out
of the keep. Beyond the enceinte wall lights sprang up, distorted
eerily by the mist. Footsteps converged on the gateway. A woman’s
acid-etched voice said, “Stop just there. Drop the knife.”

Lesley Young stood between the two bulwarks
of stone, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, both pointed
steadily at Rab. He crouched, head swinging back and forth,
scowling. One beat, two, and his fingers opened. The knife
clattered onto the muddy cobbles.

Young stepped forward and with a well-placed
kick sent it flying into the shadows.

People boiled into the keep—fluorescent
jackets, stark white faces, voices shouting. There was Heather,
crying, her makeup leaving streaks on her cheeks, and Scott,
stunned. They fell on Dakota and crushed her in a double
embrace.

“Good job,” said Patrick Gilnockie’s dry
voice, “that Rab tripped and fell just there.” He walked on past
Jean before she had a chance to reply, not that she had a reply to
make.

And there was Alasdair, his arm pulling her
so tightly against his side she felt his heart hammering behind his
ribs. His grit-on-velvet voice said, “I’m here. I’m here.”

The tension seeped down Jean’s body and out
through her toes. She fastened her arm around Alasdair’s waist and
hung on as her mind drifted into the sparkling mist . . .

The sparkles steadied. Flashlights focused.
The uniformed scrum eddied and revealed Rab standing handcuffed.
D.C.I. Gilnockie stood over him, the archangel over the beast. “Rab
Finlay, I arrest you in connection with the murder of Greg MacLeod.
You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if
you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely
on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

Rab growled unintelligibly. The uniforms
hustled him away, followed by the multilegged knot that was
Heather, Scott, and Dakota. The child glanced back at Jean,
tautness ebbing from her features, exhilaration flowing into them.
Her small face split into a broad grin. Then the Krums, too, were
gone, no more than lights and footsteps receding across the
footbridge and into the mist.

Which seemed to be thinning. Or else, Jean
thought, her eyes were clearing. She let Alasdair’s strong arm
propel her through the gateway and down the slope to the bridge.
Even though the sun was long set and night fallen, she could make
out the ocean waves rolling forward one by one, as they always had,
as they always would.

His voice barely louder than the swish and
thrum of the sea, Alasdair said, “Brenda ran up to the attics,
telling us where you’d gone.”

“Clever deduction,” said another, familiar
voice, “that the lass had gone to see the old castle.” Ah. Sanjay
Thomson was walking right behind them, followed by Young and
Gilnockie.

“With Jean,” said Alasdair, “it was by way of
being a flash of intuition.”

Smiling, Jean asked, “How’s Fergie?”

“He’ll do, Irvine’s saying. A night in
hospital, two at the most.”

“We’ve got Nancy,” said Thomson. “Orla’s
handcuffed her to her own cooker. She’s not blaming Rab. She’s
saying it could not be helped, circumstances conspired, and all
that.”

“Right,” Jean said. They followed the path up
the brae and stopped. Dunasheen, windows gleaming, fairy lights
glistening, rose ahead of them, an oasis in the midst of darkness
and despair. “Who fixed the generator?”

“Colin,” replied Thomson, “keeping himself
busy.”

Gilnockie edged past them, telling Young at
his side, “Urquhart saw the murder. That’s why he ran.”

“He should have come forward,” she said.
“We’ll do him for perverting the course of justice.”

Gilnockie’s voice sank into its supernal
serenity. “You were seeing how confused Mrs. MacLeod was after her
concussion. Could be Urquhart’s seeing a murder concussed his mind,
being a blow upon a bruise, in a way.”

“Ah.” Young’s voice indicated a thoughtful
rather than an accusing frown, but with her back turned and
retreating up the path, Jean couldn’t tell.

Thomson fell into step behind Young and
Gilnockie, Alasdair and Jean behind him. Alasdair asked Jean, voice
now soft and smooth, “How’d you get Rory to appear on cue?”

“Do you remember how, soon after we first
met, we were backed into a corner and a ghost staged a timely
distraction? Maybe two people having an allergic reaction, and a
crisis blooming—ghosts are emotional resonances, after all—and you
know, sometimes things are more than the sum of their parts, so
there are times even people who don’t normally have allergies . . .
Well, we called him, I guess. It’s Dunasheen,
Dun na
sithein
, fortress of the fairies, and the ghosts have substance
here.”

Alasdair chuckled. “That’s the sort of lucid
explanation I’d be expecting from you, Jean.”

The tall, lean shape that was Thomson half
turned toward them. “Mind you, odd things are always happening.
They could be our small minds connecting with the larger one.
There’s a reason folk believe in sacred places, landscapes, holy
relics, eh? Mind your step, the gravel’s slippy.”

Jean smiled—the lad’s hearing was as finely
tuned as his brain—and considered Alasdair’s minimalist features in
the courtyard lights.
So there
. Ultimately you believed
because you chose to believe. Ultimately you made your choices
based on your beliefs.

His gaze rolled from Thomson’s back to Jean’s
face. Shaking his head and returning her smile, he locked his arm
even more securely around her shoulders, and they walked back into
the house.

Jean gazed over the railing of the minstrel’s
gallery, if not in command, then at least in appreciation of all
she surveyed.

Below her lay the Great Hall of Dunasheen
Castle. Sunlight streamed in the tall windows, making the gold
thread in the banners sparkle. The long refectory table was set
with glasses and plates, trays of nibbles, and a wedding cake, its
three tiers of chocolatey goodness embellished with red
strawberries, red raspberries, and a few strategically placed red
flowers.

“Only you could get that all the way here
from Edinburgh in perfect shape,” Jean said.

Miranda Capaldi smiled her best Mona Lisa
smile and did not disagree. In her pale aqua silk suit and pearls,
she displayed her usual understated elegance, acting as Jean’s maid
of honor without overshadowing her. She’d even reduced her crest of
golden-red hair to a smooth cap of ash-blond.

Jean hoped she looked as good in her long
silk suit shimmering teal, green, and blue, and her gold Claddagh
jewelry, variations on the theme of two hands holding a heart.
Miranda was in charge of Alasdair’s wedding ring, a gold band
incised with Celtic interlace. Knowing Alasdair, he’d glued Jean’s
matching ring to Fergie’s hand.